Time to offset Brad and Angelina?

by Yeoh Siew Hoon

Scanning the media I feel Europe’s turning a greener shade of green.

Perhaps it’s because the weather’s been so awful – nowhere in Europe has had a real summer this year – that climate change is on top of every newspaper’s agenda.

At Heathrow, as I write this, they are having to deal with a day of “direct action” by the “Camp for Climate Change”.

Said a spokesman for the camp, “The time has come for civil disobedience.There may well be unlawful action. We will be laying siege to BAA’s head office, stopping people going in or out.”

The protestors, numbering anything between 500 and 2, 500, want to stop any expansion plans by BAA and for people to think twice before flying.

Their aim is to “stop the actions of those vested interests that watch the planet burn while counting the money they make from the fire”.

Aviation is under attack as a dirty industry and despite protestations by the airline industry that it is responsible for only 2-3% of global emissions, the environmentalists are having nothing of that.

It seems amid the noise and ruckus, the response of the airline industry is being lost.

In an article in The Sunday Telegraph, headlined “Flight Plan”, writer Colin Malam said, “If the protesters stopped to listen they might be surprised at what they heard: airport operators, airlines and aircraft manufacturers say they are acutely aware that reducing carbon emissions not only makes good commercial sense but is in everyone’s best interests.”

It then goes into a list of measures that the industry has taken.
• The Advisory Council for Aeronautics Research in Europe (ACARE), launched in 2001, has set 2020 as a deadline for halving CO2 emissions, reducing nitrogen oxide (NO2) emissions by 80% and cutting perceived external noise by 50%.

• Airbus claims the A380 will burn 17% less fuel per seat than today’s largest aircraft and be half as noisy.

• Boeing’s 787 “Dreamliner” is also designed for lower emissions and quieter take-offs and landings. It will burn 20% less fuel per passenger than current aircraft of similar size.

• easyJet has unveiled a model of the “ecoJet” it would like to have in service by 2015.

Flybe, which I flew with from Cardiff to Paris, is introducing an eco-labelling system – claiming to be the first to do so – and has tied up with a carbon offset organisation called PURE to enable its customers to offset their carbon footprint when flying with Flybe.

Then I read that “carbon offsetting schemes (are) not as green as they seem”.

The report said that a “ground-breaking study” has called into question the effectiveness of using trees to “offset” emissions, suggesting that their ability to “local-up” carbon dioxide has been greatly exaggerated.

Britons apparently spent £60 million on such schemes last year, forecast to grow to £250 million annually by 2009.

The Free Air Carbon Enrichment Project found that planting more trees would not be successful in slowing the pace of climate change. “More trees don’t necessarily mean less carbon dioxide. Planting trees is not going to do a whole lot to decreasing carbon concentration,” said the ecologist who led the project.

Meanwhile, in the French resort of St Tropez residents are seeing red over the constant shuttling to-and-fro of celebrities by helicopters, calling them loud, vulgar and dangerous.

It is unclear if they were referring to the celebrities or the choppers but a resident complained the helicopter had become “practically a scooter”, and was causing too much noise and pollution. Between June and August 2006 it is estimated there were 5,000 takes-offs and landings.

Apparently last month, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie flew low over Agen while looking for another country estate to buy. “Brad Pitt thinks he’s God,” said one resident.

It appears “God” still gets to fly while we normal beings are being told not to.

The irony is, how do you then escape the bad weather which is, according to the experts, being caused by all the bad things we have done?

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